


Announcing your place in the Family of Things

by CertifiedPissWizard



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Breakfast, Friendship, Gen, Hope too, Post-Episode: s02e34-35 Juno Steel and the Soul of the People, Post-Season/Series 02, Pre-Episode: s03e01-02 Juno Steel and the Man in Glass, Pre-Season/Series 03, and everyone needs to remember that constantly, and so good at symbolizing shit, anywyas juno and rita are best friends, god im just a ho for sunrise imagery, in which the author constantly thinks of wild geese, its just the good stuff you know, its so dramatic, junos desert epiphany of oh life fucks actually, the poem in relationship to juno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:47:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27536275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CertifiedPissWizard/pseuds/CertifiedPissWizard
Summary: The dim blue light of sunrise on Mars filters through the windows, and Rita says, “I’m glad you aren’t dead, Boss.”Juno means it when he says, “Me too, Rita. Me too.” He’s not sure at what point in all of this it happened, but a half-remembered snatch of one of the old earthen poems they learned in school has been dancing around in his head. He thinks he may finally get it- after all this learning that doing Good, being Good, seeking some nebulous greater Good isn’t all he’s worth. A lesson he’s needed for a while, probably. The snippet was, “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles in the desert repenting.”
Relationships: Mick Mercury & Juno Steel, Rita & Juno Steel
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	Announcing your place in the Family of Things

Hyperion wakes up, and Juno and Rita rise with it, untangling from where they ended up lying on the couch watching some background stream. He- he’d been so worried, and he wasn’t the only one either. They’re alright, though. Juno- he’s alive, and for the first time in a long time he wants to stay that way. It’s a strange feeling, one that he doesn’t know what to deal with it. He gets up and makes eggs. Rita would probably put glitter in them. There’s the usual post sleepover dance in the kitchen where Rita blockades Juno’s attempts to get to the coffee maker because he doesn’t make it strong enough, and he blocks her attempts to reach the breakfast cooking on the stove and make it salmon flavored. “Thanks.” He doesn’t say anything else, and it could be the pre-caffeine state or perhaps a sudden and incredibly temporary growth of tact, but Rita doesn’t say anything, just squeezes his arm for a moment.

There’s a list of things stretching out ahead, a list of tasks that needs to be completed, re-open the office, tell Alessandra he isn’t dead, visit Benten’s grave and tell him about it, check on Mick again, deal with the dishes-

There’s. A lot.

There’s also Rita shoving a mug of one of her overly complicated and overly caffeinated concoctions at him, saying, “Boss, you need to drink your coffee or you’ll get even more grouchy, and it can’t be healthy for a lady to be like that. I mean sometimes you have a vein bulging, and I don’t think that’s normal. It’s like that stream _There’s a Horse in a Hospital but the Horse is Kind of a Doctor so While We Aren’t Sure What it’s Going to Do It Should Still End Up Okay_ where the non-horse doctor Barbara got that popping vein before dying from getting run over a car, and I don’t know if they were related but Mistah Steel you can’t get run over by a car-”

Juno plates the eggs, and gently drags Rita over to the table, pushing her down into a seat. He doesn’t say thanks again or anything about how he’s grateful that he has Rita for a friend and loves her and loves Mick and hell maybe he loves Sasha too, even if they aren’t really friends anymore. After all, a lady has an image to uphold, and desert epiphany or no, it simply doesn’t do to change the whole thing over night by revealing your hidden case of being a sappy lady. One thing at a time. Like sitting across from your best friend/secretary and eating eggs and drinking coffee while she infodumps on a stream only related to the original topic conversation by the narrowest of threads that Juno will forever pretend to not understand.

The dim blue light of sunrise on Mars filters through the windows, and Rita says, “I’m glad you aren’t dead, Boss.”

Juno means it when he says, “Me too, Rita. Me too.” He’s not sure at what point in all of this it happened, but a half-remembered snatch of one of the old earthen poems they learned in school has been dancing around in his head. He thinks he may finally get it- after all this learning that doing Good, being Good, seeking some nebulous greater Good isn’t all he’s worth. A lesson he’s needed for a while, probably. The snippet was, “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles in the desert repenting.” If he’d paid a bit more attention to poetry in school he may never had had to learn all of this.

There are the sounds of hovercars whirring up outside, people getting up and going places, and he and Rita sit in the sort of companionable silence that comes after going through some big ordeal together. Cities change, and people change, and Juno has changed and will changed. For now, though, Juno says, “I know it’d give a doctor a coronary, but mind giving me another cup of coffee?”

“Only if you make some of those muffins, Mistah Steel.”

“It’s a deal, Rita.”

Mars and rebuilding and recovery and all of that can wait at least until after breakfast, and it can maybe wait until after another stream marathon or two. Maybe an extra few after Mick shows up out of nowhere. Maybe it can wait a little bit more, too, after the fire department gets called after Mick’s attempt at cooking. The world can wait, just a bit, and when it’s time to go back and deal with it- well. Juno won’t be going it alone- something that he’d tried to do for so long. He doesn’t see the fucked up city getting worse or the shining castles in the sky Ramses spoke up- he looks out and sees it as it is, harsh and exciting and terrible and beautiful. He’ll be ready to face it, whatever comes.

**Author's Note:**

> the poem referenced and that the title is from is wild geese by mary oliver and sometimes i may or may not cry reading the poem you have no proof what are you a cop. if you aren't a cop then leave a comment please.


End file.
